How to Be Persistent in Sales Without Annoying Your Prospects

It is likely that you will find success when making an initial attempt at communication. Generally, it takes a lot of effort to be remembered among all the people interrupting their normal day-to-day. But how can one make themselves stand out from the crowd, and cut through all the inbox and voicemail spam? How do you manage to maintain balance between continuing to pursue something and pestering someone? These are some suggestions to keep in touch with a prospect without disturbing them.

How to Follow Up Without Being Annoying

1. Choose the right channel to reach out.

The decision whether to contact a prospective customer by email or telephone is entirely yours and your company’s to make. Some salespeople begin their process with a written message; others would rather jump right into a conversation. There are pros and cons to both approaches. Let’s start with the “shooting over an email” approach.

Email

Through email communication, the receiver has the opportunity to take the time to consider your message. This can be saved to look back on later with a label that says “follow up later,” and passed along to another person from the company if it is thought that they would be a better person to communicate with.

Consider the number of emails that arrive in your inbox every day. How many of those do you actually read? If you can’t identify the sender of a message, it is likely you will just take a quick glance of the subject line before deciding to save it, or discard it. It is likely that you will not receive an answer from your initial message — many inboxes are overflowing with emails, so be ready to send numerous emails if you opt to use this method.

Phone

A telephone call has the potential to capture someone’s attention quicker than other methods of communication, allowing you to come across as a real person rather than just another automated message. If you feel confident in having a telephone conversation, you could hasten yourself to the desirable connection level and arrange for a call-back.

Be ready to leave a voicemail in any event as it is not likely that your prospect will be close to their phone regularly. Even if you take the time to leave a message on a voicemail, there is no guarantee that it will be listened to or that you will receive a reply. Often, voicemails are heard and then quickly forgotten. The disadvantage of using the phone to communicate is clear.

The optimum way to make contact with prospective customers is to combine the use of both telephone and email. A popular strategy (for anyone searching for one) is the BASHO Sequence created by Jeff Hoffman which consists of four communication attempts, first to introduce oneself, then to be persistent, and finally, in the event that the person of interest has not answered following the preceding three attempts, to end the connection.

2. Use less formal channels to build rapport.

Communication through both telephones and email are typically the go-to techniques when making initial contact with potential customers — they are straightforward, and they are effective. There are different approaches to contacting potential customers that can allow you to stay consistent without being overly intrusive. Here’s what you can consider if you’re interested in pursuing some other tactics:

Social Media

It is possible to get onto the fringes of a prospect’s awareness if they are not replying to your voicemails and emails. Social media provides a platform for salespeople to develop a sense of camaraderie in order to encourage potential customers to converse with them.

Referrals

Sometimes, no matter what you try, a prospect will not answer the phone or acknowledge your email. They might not be social media users, either. Salespeople often create a lot of work for themselves by inquiring about referrals.

Smart sales pros are eager to speak with any person from target accounts to gain knowledge regarding ambitions, problems, and priorities of those accounts. Interacting with the sales personnel at that company can often be the best approach to discovering how they function internally — they’re more available, and can often give helpful information regarding their structure, which individuals are responsible for what and those who don’t perform very well. On many occasions, salespeople have a large sway in a business, so a suggestion or introduction that they provide is typically well accepted when given.

3. Get your prospect’s attention with a brief and clear email or voicemail message.

No matter if you contact someone by email or telephone, your communication should be straightforward and captivating – you should focus on supplying them with something that specifically meets their necessities. Try to get three components in every message:

First, why you are contacting the prospect, which focuses on him or her
Second, why you are contacting them now, which ties into your company
Third, you should ask for something you want that is easy and quick to complete, such as a short pre-scheduled call at a specified time, or to be referred to a person you’d like to speak with within their organization

So if you’re on a sales team at, say, a content creation agency, your sales team might open with:

“I noticed you’ve been posting a lot of great content to your blog. I also see that you downloaded our ebook on lead generation, but don’t have any calls-to-action on those great blog posts of yours. Would you be interested in discussing how you could increase leads from your blog by doing it a bit differently? I have times available at 8 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. tomorrow, or 9 a.m. or 3 p.m. on Friday.”

You have made it clear that you have taken the time to learn about the prospect’s needs and can provide a solution. Furthermore, you want to engage in a dialogue, not lecture them.

Afterwards, right away send an email to the potential customer informing them that you have left them a message, what the subject of the message was, and an inquiry that encourages further communication. Be personable. Don’t talk about the product or service you have to offer– it’s all about the customer and they will be quickly uninterested if they receive an obvious sales message in their email or voicemail.

4. Be persistent … for a reasonable amount of time.

If you’ve not received a reply to your first message, wait for at least 48 hours then contact again, this time framing the benefit you’re presenting in a slightly different way.

Take a moment to recall that you contacted them prior, expressed that you had looked into their firm’s book/most recent blog article/new item, and had ideas to assist them with accomplishing their objectives more effectively. End the message with another open invitation to connect.

Still no response? Wait another 48 hours and then reach out again. You should make sure to state that you have already made two attempts prior, but to keep a professional demeanor while doing so. Additionally, it may be beneficial to include a bit more data in this third message. Inform the potential buyer that you have been attempting to get in contact with them, and explain the advantages they could get from your product or service in a bit more detail. In your next email, include one or two pieces of content from your organization that you think might be helpful for them. These could be lengthy resources or blog posts pertaining to an issue you suspect they are facing. Show that you are willing to discuss their ambitions and showcase your expertise in aspects that are important to them.

5. Know when it’s time to call it quits.

After three tries, you might think about sending a message to sever ties. You are informing the potential customer that you have attempted to get in contact with them, and that you do not wish to disturb them if it isn’t the right time to communicate and there is no connection.

Put simply, the breakup email should serve as a final reminder of your repeated attempts to make contact. Interestingly, this is the email that yields the highest success rate for the many salespeople I consulted with whilst composing this post.

Why?

Prospective clients may be eager to speak with you; however, they were unavailable when they read your introductory emails and heard your voicemails. Those messages made a good impression, and the recipients are keen to discuss how you can be of assistance. They were depending on you, much like any other salesperson, to keep attempting to gain access to them.

Focus on the Top of the Funnel

Most people understand the concept of keeping track of their conversion rate, but how about monitoring your contact and appointment rates?

Contact Rate – % of leads you’re able to get in touch with
Meeting Scheduled Rate – % of leads you schedule meetings with
Meeting Completed Rate – % of meetings that actually happen

Here’s why this matters.

Most companies are only focused on closing hot leads.

At first glance this seems to make sense. Focus on your best opportunities, right?

This method results in many promising contacts that require further nurturing being neglected.

Many companies are unaware of how many prospects they may acquire or lose at the beginning of the sales process.

The Impact of Making Another Call

Folks don’t necessarily get a hold of someone right away and sometimes it takes several attempts to reach the person.

I’ve heard nearly every excuse for not dialing the phone again, including, “If they had genuine interest, they should have answered initially or gotten in touch with me.”

Do you consider yourself to be a salesperson or someone who simply takes orders?

Individuals who are responsible for taking orders do not think about anything that happens before the task at hand, such as sending out paperwork and signing agreements. Sales personnel attempt to reach out, then combat any disagreements, and finally relate issues to solutions to assist prospects in recognizing worth in their product.

Agents might be of the opinion that repeating follow-ups will only frustrate the prospect, but we tend to find this to be uncommon so long as the number of calls given over multiple weeks does not exceed six. Very few companies meet or exceed this threshold.

What is the maximum number of calls you’re willing to make before you stop trying?

Here is a graph of the likelihood of a sale based on the history of sales activity. There is a link between making a further call and the chances of making contact.

Lead Nurturing Beyond the Initial Conversation

Not everyone who shows an interest in your product or service is ready to make a purchase right away, but this should not prevent you from pursuing them.

The importance of real estate lies in its location, location, location, whereas lead nurturing hinges on following up, following up, following up.

The aim is to always remain ahead of prospective customers in a manner that adds value instead of being irritating. It’s part art part science.

An effective lead nurturing program should synchronize with the buying schedule of each potential customer, regardless if their buying process takes a week, a month, or a year. The speed and manner in which contact is maintained may shift over time, but it should never be terminated simply because the potential customer was not ready to make a purchase instantly.

Firms that are successful in this capacity are capable of creating a durable asset from their leads instead of going through an ineffective cycle of short-term use that squanders promising leads.

Takeaway Learning to nurture long term leads will radically increase the yield on your existing lead flow.

Now that the value of strong follow up has been firmly established, let us delve into how to optimize yours.

Investigate a variety of approaches and methods for following up.

Use a Follow up Schedule

Don’t leave follow up to chance.

Many brokers do not make the effort to explain and transmit clear hopes for precisely what considerable follow-up should seem like beyond a few hazy generalities. Get specific.

Devise a timetable that establishes when phone calls and email follow-ups should take place.

Your team members will recognize that you treat the topic with importance, and they will respond more favorably if there are clear expectations.

Use Different Contact Formats

It’s as simple as it sounds. Use more than one way reach out. All types of communication, such as electronic mail, traditional mail, telephone calls, texting, and social media, can be used.

The purpose is to reach out to prospective consumers in various methods to ensure continued visibility and be unlike the other contenders.

Time Your Follow up For Maximum Impact

In business, as in life, timing is everything.

Certain days of the week and times of the day are ideal for reaching out to prospects.

The next two graphs combine the rate of emails opened from MailChimp and the percentage of phone calls answered from a research project conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.